It is known that within the context of the concept known as “cloud computing” computing power is made available by a service provider to third parties which utilize said computing power for executing applications. In this scenario the applications run on a data processing center of the service provider which can either be concentrated at one location or else be interconnected in a distributed arrangement in order to provide flexible services.
It is in the interest of a customer of the service provider in the form of an application owner who wants to arrange for an application belonging to it to run on the data processing center of the service provider to ensure that the service provider has no possibility of being able to access the application and/or application data generated by the application. Protection measures must therefore be taken in order to shield off system administrators on the service provider side from the application. An example of said shielding measure is to encrypt critical data which the application stores on appropriate storage media, in particular on hard disks, of the data processing center of the service provider. By this means an unnoticed access by system administrators of the data processing center to data of the application can be prevented. One problem in this case is the secure safekeeping of the cryptographic keys used for the encryption.
Security modules, in particular in the form of hardware security modules, are known. These enable secret keys to be stored in a secure environment, in particular in the form of a smartcard or a security token, with access to the stored keys being made possible only by way of an authentication. An identification number known as a PIN is typically used for authentication purposes, whereby the owner of the security module is required to enter said PIN in order to gain access to the data stored thereon. When a security module for storing cryptographic keys for the purpose of encrypting application data is used in the course of exporting an application to a data processing center of an external service provider, it proves disadvantageous that in the case of a conventional authentication by way of a PIN said PIN must be entered manually every time the security module is accessed.